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Beyond that, there should have been more building—but he caught glimpses of blue sky when the clouds of dust parted. There were exposed wires and rebar sticking out of the mangled end of the building, too.
Electricity. Fire. Why was that striking him as such a very bad thing right now?
Jet fuel. Airports had jet fuel. Highly flammable, explosive jet fuel.
One of the baggage carts moved and he heard a steady stream of cursing in what sounded like a Nordic language. A pile of rubble moved, rising and shifting.
Moving on instinct, a still-stunned Lancelot pushed to his feet and stumbled over to the rubble, shoving bits of concrete off Eric’s back. The sight of blood covering the fleet admiral’s face helped dispel some of Lancelot’s emotional numbness.
Eric wiped his face with his hand and looked around. “Marie. Nikolas. Charlotta.”
Lancelot turned toward what he thought might have been the front of the building.
When they’d been waiting in the service hall for confirmation to go ahead and bring Alicia out of the building, Marie had called to warn them that there was a disturbance at the security checkpoint. The disturbance, which sounded unrelated to what they were doing, still had the effect of fucking up their plans.
All airport security was now on high alert, and the constables were on their way to arrest and remove the passenger who was refusing to follow security orders.
After a tense discussion, punctuated by periods of tense silence while they waited for information from Marie, who was in the airport and patched into the security radio frequency, Eric and Lancelot had decided to stay inside. Charlotta gave them the go-ahead, and Nikolas wheeled Alicia to the open doors of the ambulance, where Charlotta, another member of the guard, waited.
Lancelot and Eric had ditched their A&E jackets, stuffing them under the blankets near Alicia’s legs. The original plan had been they’d do a three-man escort of Alicia all the way to the ambulance, but two men exiting and then reentering a service door when the airport was on high alert was too risky—even with the paramedic jackets on. They couldn’t afford to get hauled into airport jail by a vigilant curbside guard. Instead, Marie had exited the airport with the arriving passengers, then doubled back to meet the ambulance.
Lancelot had to resist the urge to run back to the plane and check on Hugo and Sylvia, but he’d been assured that another Spartan Guard had taken Marie’s place. Once the ambulance doors had closed, he and Eric had started back to the plane, where they would rejoin his fiancés, wait a few moments, and then make their own way to Triskelion Castle.
It had been a good plan. A secure plan.
But very few plans were bomb-proof.
“God-fucking-dammit,” Eric snarled.
A gust of wind had cleared some of the dust in the air, and for a moment they had a view of what had been the curb and loading area at the front of the building. They were able to see it because the entire front corner of the building was gone.
Pieces of what might have once been an ambulance were strewn across the pavement. Four tires and the lower frame of a second vehicle weren’t far from where the ambulance had been. There were other cars tipped over, sobbing people crawling out of them. Chunks of the building were scattered like a child’s jacks all around them. Sirens wailed in the distance, and shaky-looking airport guards, visible, thanks to the neon vests they wore, were shouting orders.
Eric started forward, through the rubble toward the ambulance remains. Lancelot caught him by the shoulder. “No, Fleet Admiral.”
“They might be—”
“No. They’re not. The chivalrous thing to do would be to check for survivors. To help them.” Lancelot hauled back on the fleet admiral’s shoulder. “But I’m not a knight yet, and we’re making the smart choice, not the chivalrous one.”
“My guards—”
“Are dead,” Lancelot said bluntly. “And until you have someone else protecting you, I’m appointing myself.”
Eric rounded on him. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but for a moment, Lancelot could see the fires of hell in the other man’s eyes.
“Sylvia, Hugo,” Lancelot said. “I need to check on them. Be with them. But I can’t do that if you don’t come with me.”
Eric blinked, looking over his shoulder. The first police car came screaming onto the scene, a fire truck right behind it.
Lancelot grabbed the other man and shoved him toward their plane. Luckily, Eric started walking. They were met halfway by a sobbing Sylvia and ghostly pale Hugo, running alongside a man in a baggage handler’s uniform. Hugo, bless the man, had grabbed the plane’s first aid kit. The fact that he’d thought to do that was another reason to love him.
Sylvia threw herself into his arms. “You’re alive, you’re alive!”
“We are,” Eric said grimly. “But Alicia’s gone.”
“Marie?” Hugo asked.
Eric shook his head. “The ambulance is in pieces. Small ones. No way she, Nikolas, or Charlotta survived.”
